Alphabetum
by Sophia Jirafe
Summary: Life in 26 paragraphs


ALPHABETUM  
by Sophia Jirafe  
sophia.jirafe@usa.net  
  
Classification: V  
Rating: PG  
Spoilers: post "Rain King"  
Archival: linkage only; please ask  
Disclaimer: copyrighted material used herein  
Summary: Life in 26 paragraphs  
  
----  
  
Anything I say to him today falls into the void. Dusty sun streaks in through   
the windows of the car, glaring off the worn leather of my briefcase into my   
eyes. His are shaded by those silly skier sunglasses he picked up somewhere   
last summer, but I know he's not looking at me. I saw something in him   
yesterday I wasn't meant to see, and isolation is my punishment. I probably   
shouldn't have made that crack about the blind leading the blind.  
  
*  
  
Blinded by the glare, I look out the window at the dead landscape. Last   
night's downpour has already been absorbed by the thirsty fields, and still   
the greedy crops clamor for more. Some people are like that--no matter how   
much water you give, they ask for more. I feel like I'm trying to drink from   
the air these days, desperate for what I see in other people. Love bloomed   
in Kroner last night, soaking the lucky with the water of life. I feel like   
I still haven't gotten my feet wet. I stride through the puddles on my   
towering heels, trying not to get muddy, and end up with loneliness for all   
my pains and care.  
  
*  
  
Careworn, time-sanded men flash by outside my window as we zoom onward. Men   
who work the soil, men who take the entirety of their precious lives and   
plant it in the ground and say "This is where I am." Men who let themselves   
be defined by a scrap of land, a wife, a lifetime of small achievements and   
personal quirks and family history. Men who wake up to food smells and fresh   
overalls and darkness and a day's hard labor ahead. I don't envy them the   
work, but I want their security. Land does not leave. Not like people do.  
  
*  
  
Doubts didn't used to plague me this way. Once I got past the awkwardness of   
childhood and college, I was confident. Stable. Competent. I used to take   
pride in myself and my accomplishments. I used to be happy. Now nothing   
satisfies me. At night I lie in the tangled sheets and stare at the ceiling   
and think until I'm dry-eyed and exhausted. I've tried it all--deep breathing,   
muscle relaxing and chamomile tea. The darker it gets the more alert I am.   
Two nights ago I lay in the dark and listened to him breathe on the cot next   
to me, the wooden frame squeaking as he turned in his sleep, and envied him   
that restless oblivion, his capacity for faith in the darkness. The darkness   
in which I try so hard not to believe.  
  
*  
  
Evening will be welcome tonight, I think. I love dusk, twilight, half-light,   
the twenty minutes between daylight and electric light. I love the time when   
I can strain my eyes just a little longer and watch the room darken. Light   
makes me feel foolish for being unhappy. With the dark comes blurred vision,   
a way of seeing things that fits my frame of mind. I bought a goldfish last   
week and watched him bump his nose against the glass again and again,   
darting for food and returning to float aimlessly around his clear little   
prison. Two days later I found him belly-up, and buried him at sea in the   
guise of the pond at Dumbarton Oaks Park. I never named him. Sometimes I   
think I see him in Mulder's tank of woeful, undernourished prisoners, his   
golden fins dim under the shadow of a rock. I bought him to bring life into   
my life and found I could never be happy when another was not free.  
  
*  
  
Freeing myself from the depths of my mind, I look back at Mulder. He hasn't   
moved an inch. There are a hundred things I'd like to say to him, and words   
and time for none of them. It hurts to leave this town. I'd like to pretend   
I could be happy here, that magic could be purchased. I felt a little closer   
to him here, in a way I can't define. We're still in the dark about each   
other, but I think last night a little flicker appeared at the edge of my   
vision. I'm not sure he sees me anymore--maybe I'm just something he's   
learned to see around, another blind spot for him. Whatever he saw in me   
once, I know it has been forgotten long ago.  
  
*  
  
God, I don't want to do this here.  
  
*  
  
Here I am, falling chest-deep into that old, faded memory again. Here I am,   
dwelling on sensations I can still call up after all these years, the touch   
of skin on skin and hands holding hands. Here I am, lost in a night that   
remains whole and perfect in my mind, a single fluid night of wonder that   
I'd give my world to relive.  
  
*  
  
I've kept a secret from Mulder for years now. Nothing big, nothing terrible,   
nothing special. Just one of those little things that pops up and now and   
then in my mind. We made love once. Did it hard and soft and then hard again   
on the first of many motel beds. Stripped each other with eyes and hands,   
the raw newness of it giving way to blissful familiarity. I took him in my   
mouth and body, caressed and kissed every inch of his muscled flesh. He   
covered me with himself, took the fear and worry out of the night, held me   
close and made my body hum with pleasure. We ordered a pizza, bared our   
souls, and a week later they wiped his memory at Ellens Air Base, along with   
any recollection of that night. I agonized for two days over how to remind   
him, then locked it in the attic of my memory. I never realized I'd left the   
door ajar.  
  
*  
  
Jarring potholes in the road drag me back to this sunny Kansas morning.   
Mulder slows the car, the briefcase bounces on the seat, and I immerse   
myself in the memory of his kiss.  
  
*  
  
Kissing. That's all it was with them. Just wet, slobbery, red-lipstick   
kissing. I've kissed a few strangers in my time. I can't imagine Mulder   
watching me kiss a stranger. I wonder what I look like when I'm kissing   
someone. I wonder if it's the same look as when I'm lonely.   
  
*  
  
Lying isn't lying if it's the sin of omission, I think. It's kinder, really.   
I'm sure I only dreamed that I saw a flicker of remembrance in his eyes last   
summer, as we gravitated to each other in that time of madness. And who's to   
say he'd want me if he knew? I can see him making love to the admiring,   
wide-eyed innocent I was six years ago. I don't see that same passion   
blooming between partners who have been aged and weathered by years of   
struggle and death, years of sharing airspace and fast food and CPR embraces.   
I am not the woman he once kissed. The young woman in scrubs who wielded her   
shiny, new-minted science like a beacon of truth is not me.   
  
*  
  
Meanings are many these days. A look has a thousand interpretations, a glance   
can be amorous or annoyed, a touch comforting or casual. Yet I ask myself   
who I am and get no reply. I feel drifting and aimless, numb and unnoticed.   
Sometimes I want to sleep forever. Sometimes I want to kick down the walls.   
When I was eight years old I rode my cousin's gelding, Silver Fox. Eighteen   
hands. Giant gray jumper. He bucked me off with one foot in the stirrups and   
I, in the fury of my childhood, kicked him good in the underbelly, stubbing   
my toe. He split my shin with a hoof and I ate dirt. I want someone who will   
kick back now.  
  
*  
  
Now is not the time I wish to be in. Now is what must be endured to get   
through tomorrow. Now is the extension of yesterday. Now is the time of   
waiting in the wings. Now is when I am no one.  
  
*  
  
One more bout of potholes and I'm back in the car. It's nearly noon and the   
sun is good and hot, captured by my black suit and drenching me in sweat. I   
pull at my sticky collar, trying to let a little air down my flushed neck.   
I'm going to pretend we're not in the same car right now. The tension is   
thick but I'm not in the mood for clearing it with small talk about the   
weather and the news. I'll think about the bath I want to take, the stir   
fry I want to cook, the book I left on my bedside table and the movies due   
back yesterday. I want the world where Mulder doesn't apply.  
  
*  
  
Plying me with drink used to be the best way to get a secret out of me. A   
margarita or two and I'd be spilling my life's most intimate details to   
anyone who shared bar space with me. I don't drink anymore, and the secrets   
I have are more important than the fact that my roommate Denise slept with   
her boyfriend and his brother on the same night. I keep secrets about the   
things I've seen, the dreams I have, and the fact that my partner once slid   
my robe from my shoulders and dropped to his knees in front of me, still   
holding a candle. Secrets about strange faces and dying children and the   
feel of Mulder's mouth on my neck. I don't have words for these secrets.   
My body is a vault of sensation without perception, things stored but not   
analyzed as I pound forward, breathless, on the path of the all-consuming   
quest.  
  
*  
  
Questioning myself and my life is never helpful, I think, bringing my gaze   
back into the present. The heat is oppressive. I can fall into these dark   
pools for hours, desperate and intent on imposing order on the jagged pieces   
of things. In the end, I just come back to the same truths again, the same   
hard dead ends I can't work around. I should make peace with my maze, accept   
that life is complex and little can be resolved. And I do, most days. I   
think I'm content. I survive. It's only times like now, when he won't look   
at me and something heavy sits in my stomach and we can't wait to get away   
from each other, that I remember his touch and the darkness of my life and   
things we'll never say to each other but will go on pushing down into the   
void. The things that rose to our throats last summer and spoke from our   
eyes before the fear came too and we turned and ran.  
  
*  
  
Random thought: if I reached over and kissed him now, would he kiss back? Or   
do I have to leave him first?  
  
*  
  
Stop this.   
  
*  
  
This is turning out to be one lovely morning. Of course, the past few days   
weren't really so bad. No one attacked me. No creeping, crawling *thing*   
rose from murky sewers. The bad guy was a shy Midwestern lover, the victim   
a corn-fed sweetheart, and the case ended happily in a gymnasium hung with   
balloons and crepe and tinfoil stars. I should be singing with joy. Yet   
somehow, seeing the happiness of others just intensifies that ache in my   
heart that never really goes away. If nothing else, saving the hapless   
public from monsters makes my own life so much sweeter in comparison.   
Yes, I have no friends, no lover, no children, and last week I used my   
vibrator to hammer a nail into the wall, but at least the government didn't   
drive me insane with high frequency aircraft and my yard isn't full of dead   
babies. And as long as I have no husband or vegetable garden or child of my   
own, I can believe in the future. I can pretend that my real life still   
hasn't begun.  
  
*  
  
Understanding myself doesn't make things better. I can sit on this sticky   
leather seat and squirm in the heat and know all the reasons I'm unhappy.   
The *reason*, singular, hiding over there behind a briefcase and dark lenses.   
I could write a novel of my misery and still lie awake at night wondering   
when my hair will turn gray and why I can't tell Mulder I love him. When the   
darkness will finally catch up and why I can't go backward or forward. When   
tomorrow will be real and why my love for him is so hard to hold, and so   
very vital.  
  
*  
  
Vitally important is a phrase I never understand. I have learned how very   
little human beings can exist upon. I know the world won't stop if I turn   
in field notes a day late or if Mulder blows off a pizza date to track down   
some arcane lead. I know how to survive instead of living. I know about the  
slow death of the soul. I know how to lose so quietly that everyone thinks   
that, if I really wanted to, I could win.  
  
*  
  
Winter in my heart and early summer on the fields. Kroner and love and   
simple joy behind us and a long trip ahead. My life--my one life--looming   
like a dark land of adventure. Long stretches of boredom punctuated by   
heart-stopping moments of wonder and terror. Near misses with love and   
days of longing and sublimation. A pirate map where both treasure and   
tragedy are marked with an X.  
  
*  
  
X-Files. What a stupid name. I've always wondered what fool was responsible   
for it. Someone who read too many grocery store sci-fi novels, maybe.   
Someone who thought "Tron" was a really cool movie, someone with the   
entire set of Star Trek novels. I've always hoped it wasn't Mulder. I   
haven't mustered the courage to ask him yet.  
  
*  
  
Yet my heart races and my stomach turns when I think of *home*, the small   
sanctuary I've built to rest in between swings of the pendulum. I can't   
leave him yet, can't admit that once again we've failed to connect and that   
my bed is empty in the darkness. Calm--deep breaths and close my eyes and go   
somewhere quiet and Zen.  
  
*  
  
Zenith reached and the car skids over the top of a rise. The airstrip   
stretches before us, a flat beige burn through miles of prickly gold. We   
speed down the hill and my heart floods my throat and I gasp without thinking.  
He looks at me, concern in his eyes and nothing more, and squeezes my hand   
in his cool, dry one. I can't look at him. The rainfall has begun, and I   
wish for everything, anything.   
  
  
  
  
----  
  
Immense thanks to Diana Battis, for making me presentable, and Jintian, for   
not giving up on me.   
  
Partial credit for the plot goes to Scullyfic, for providing the following   
improv elements:  
  
-Scully kicking someone or something and hurting her foot   
-A character uses a sex toy, but not for its intended purpose.  
-Mulder *catching* Scully in a liplock with someone, and not a platonic one,   
either!   
-A mysterious ghost-fish appearing now and then in Mulder's aquarium.  
-Mulder or Scully riding a big gray Jumper. Your choice as to sex of the   
horse, but Fox should be part of the name.  
  
Full credit for the structure goes to William Boyd's infinitely more literary   
"Beulah Berlin, an A-Z", as seen in The New Yorker, 11/6/2000.  
  
This and more at http://www.dreamwater.com/mcaact/maren.html  



End file.
